Links: Captain Chris Evans, Fan Bingbing, and Queer-free Freddy
Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 12:00PM • THR A yummy Chris Evans cover story on Trump resistance, Captain America as the key figure that allowed the MCU to flourish, and his superhero-free future. He really wants to do a musical!
• Oh So Geeky fetishisizes the good captain with millions of gifs in this piece about his arc within the MCU and Avengers Infinity War in particular. So much Chris Evans this week!
• The Guardian For its Chinese release Bohemian Rhapsody has lost three full minutes (including all queer references, any mention of AIDS, and what sounds like the loss of one entire character - Mercury's boyfriend). The movie has made almost a billion worldwide. Maybe have some respect for Mercury's legacy, Warner Bros, and just not release it in China?
More after the jump including animation lawsuits, what's next for Alex Wolff, the end of Game of Thrones, and a must-read Fan Bingbing article...
• HuffPost a look at what the choreographer Madeline Hollander brought to Us and to Lupita Nyong'o's performance
• Coming Soon we were waiting to see what would happen with Alex Wolff after his amazing Hereditary performance. Not as much news as we've expected thus far but he's just joined the cast of a university set thrilled called The Line. Since most of the cast is older we hope he's got a large role being age appropriate for the setting
• Cartoon Brew animators on Sausage Party (2016) have won a pay dispute over unpaid overtime
• Short of the Week Fox Searchlight, often a formidable Oscar player, began acquiring shorts last year, raising some industry eyebrows. They've now launched 'Searchlight Shorts' starting with their freshly Oscared Skin (2018)
• Rolling Stone talkes to Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner before the final season of the show that made them famous, Game of Thrones
• Coming Soon HBO developing a new epic fantasy series called Asunda (with a lead for a young black woman). They're surely sweating the end of Game of Thrones so expect them and other content providers to be searching for a big sword & sorcery property
• Short of the Week Fox Searchlight, often a formidable Oscar player, began acquiring shorts last year, raising some industry eyebrows. They've now launched 'Searchlight Shorts' starting with their freshly Oscared Skin (2018)
• i09 seven non-scary songs made creepy by horror films, "I Got Five On It" the latest victim of this trend in Us
Today's Must Read
• Vanity Fair recaps the entire Fan Bingbing disappearance/tax evasion scandal in China and the shockwaves that have followed for the Chinese movie industry. There's lots of fascinating stuff therein about their booming market (they'll soon overtake Hollywood as the largest film market) including this bit:
Will Fan Bingbing still co-star in Jessica Chastain's international female spy film? We don't know
Because show business is still so new in China—it’s been only 20 years since private companies have been allowed to make movies—there aren’t many bankable stars who can guarantee box-office success. As a result, A-list actors like Fan Bingbing were able to command top dollar: it was not uncommon for as much as 90 percent of a film’s production budget to go toward on-screen talent. “We are in the golden age of Hollywood, where the star is key,” said a Chinese film executive who asked not to be identified.
The star-dependent culture was on full display at a DVD store in Beijing where I bought pirated copies of Fan’s movies. Discs were organized not by title or category but by actor. Nicolas Cage, Tom Hanks, Tom Hardy, and Jason Statham all received the full-row treatment. Nicole Kidman, whom many Chinese consider a vision of unimpeachable beauty, also got her own row. Others—Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams, even Meryl Streep—were relegated to a row seemingly reserved for miscellaneous white actresses.
Reader Comments (8)
I guess all you need to know about Bohemian Rhapsody is the fact that eliminating all queer references equals a loss of no more than 3 minutes, less than 2.5 % of the film's running time.
The chinese are the lucky ones regarding BR,I wish I could do a Clementine and erase it from my memory.
Disney/20th Century Fox is releasing Bohemian Rhapsody, not AT&T/Warner Bros, right? Re: MrW’s point, (s)he said a mouthful there.
This article is so dated about so many things....
Sadly there are only three Chinese stars who are can guarantee box-office success at the moment: Xu Zheng, Huang Bo, and Shen Teng. They are all male and all comedian with dramatic chops. Both Jackie Chan and Tony Leung Chiu-wai had huge flops recently; Chow yun-fat had a big hit last year but is very inconsistent.
Fan is never really bankable in film. She bring huge rating to TV soap drama and reality show (which is the main source of income for most Chinese stars nowadays and one of the biggest damaging factors to our film industry). And yes, Fan is still doing 355, she is storming her comeback now...
And btw, Kidman is famous here but in no way bigger than Meryl, Julia, Cate, Natalie, and Jennifer Lawrence. Leo, Tom Cruise, Dwayne Johnson, and Aamir Khan are the four real bankable foreign stars right now.
Chris Evans is fucking cool. I like the fact that he never takes himself seriously yet does have some interesting shit to say. Especially with what is happening right now here in America as it's gone to shit right now.
LOL FBB was never perceived as the "kindest" star in China. She had the "slut" label (so was her nemesis Zhang Ziyi) for more than a decade (one of the reasons being she was Sammo Hung Kam Po's mistress) until she won best actress at Tokyo Film Fest for Buddha Mountain. That's when her PR team starts to spread the term "Fan Ye" so she can change her image from the "Bitch u love to hate" to "Badass u wanna be BFF with" for female audience.
She got "caught" because of her link to Chinese billionaire Xu Jiayin. She use to be his mistress and was using her own production company to do "laundry" for him.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, have you seen HBO is also doing a prequel show set in that universe with Naomi Watts AND Miranda Richardson in the lead roles? I can't wait.
Who doesn't love Chris Evans?